Chapter 1: The Curse of the Moonless Night
The moon never rose that night.
The wind hissed through the Blackridge woods as if whispering a warning, and the stars blinked nervously in the sky. Deep within the dense thickets, a young healer named Elara knelt beside the lifeless body of a wolf pup, her trembling fingers glowing faintly with silvery magic.
She whispered a prayer to the old gods, but her voice cracked with exhaustion. The magic wasn't enough. It never was.
"It's dead, Elara."
She flinched at the voice behind her. Lysandra, Beta of the Silverclaw Pack, stood with arms folded and an unreadable expression. "You need to stop trying to fix what the Moon Goddess has already claimed."
Elara clenched her fists. "I don't care what the Moon Goddess wants. I'm not hers."
That statement carried a weight she never spoke aloud in front of anyone not since the day the Moonless Curse marked her on her sixteenth birthday. No wolf had ever found their mate under a starless sky, and Elara's mark glowed with a fireless, red-black swirl one no pack could explain. She was the cursed wolf. The healer with no mate.
And worse everyone feared her because of it.
"I'm sorry," Lysandra said softly, but it sounded more like pity than sympathy. She turned and disappeared into the mist.
Elara gathered the small body, wrapped it in her cloak, and buried it beneath the roots of an ancient ash tree. She didn't cry. Not for the pup, not for herself.
She never cried anymore.
The forest stirred. A pulse beat through the ground. Ancient. Unnatural.
Elara stood. The scent of sulfur stung her nostrils.
Then she saw him.
A man stepped from the shadows, tall and sharp as a blade of obsidian. His skin shimmered with a faint hue of bronze, as though sculpted from ambered dusk. His eyes one silver, one black met hers.
"You are mine," he said, voice like velvet over flame.
The mark on Elara's back burned.